Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

“OK.”

We climbed back into the car, and the homeless man watched us with smiling eyes that said in no uncertain terms that he had just overheard a conversation between two people who took themselves too seriously.

The car pulled up outside my building and we sat in the backseat facing each other, with barely a blink between us, barely the slightest movement.

“Sure I can’t convince you to stay in Australia for a few months?”

It was obvious that what she needed more than anything was to have a friendly face around, and I felt bad because I was taking mine to Europe.

“Sorry, Anouk. This is something I have to do.”

She nodded, then wrote me a check for $25,000. I was eternally grateful, but not so grateful I didn’t wish it were more.

We kissed goodbye, and I almost fell to pieces watching the black Mercedes disappear from sight, but I pulled myself together, out of habit. I walked to the bank and put the check in my account. I would have to wait three days before I could access the money to buy myself a one-way ticket to somewhere else. Three days seemed too long.

When I got home, I lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about the fact that there were cat hairs on the couch that weren’t there yesterday. Not having a cat, I had no explanation for it. Just another of life’s inscrutable and pointless mysteries.

I tried to go to sleep, and when I couldn’t go there, I tried to get sleep to come to me. That didn’t work either. I got up and drank two beers and lay down on the couch again. My mind took over and dug up a few fragile images that seemed ready to crack if I thought about them hard enough. I decided to think about the future instead. In three days I would be on a plane to Europe, just as my father had once been, at roughly the same age, when almost everyone he knew was dead. Well, you have to follow in people’s footsteps sometimes. You can’t expect every cough, scratch, and sneeze to be your own.

Around midnight I started working on the obituary for my father that Anouk could print in the paper. After staring at a blank page for two days, I began.

Martin Dean, 1956-2001

Who was my father?

The offal of the universe.

The fatty rind.

An ulcer on the mouth of time.

He was sorry he never had a great historical name like Pope Innocent VIII or Lorenzo the Magnificent.

He was the man who first told me that no one would buy life insurance if it was called death insurance.

He thought the best definition of thoroughness is having your ashes buried.

He thought that people who don’t read books don’t know that any number of dead geniuses are waiting for their call.

He thought that there seems to be no passion for life, only for lifestyle.

About God- he thought that if you live in a house, it’s of only nominal interest to know the name of the architect who designed it.

About evolution- he thought it was unfair that man is at the top of the food chain when he still believes the newspaper headlines.

About pain and suffering- he thought that you can bear it all. It’s only the fear of pain and suffering that is unbearable.

I took a break and read over what I’d written. All true. Not bad. This was coming along nicely. But I should be more personal. After all, he wasn’t just a brain in a jar spitting out ideas, he was also a human being with emotions that made him sick.

He never achieved unlonely aloneness. His aloneness was terrible for him.

He could not hear a mother calling for her child in the park without calling out too, sick with the ominous feeling that something awful had happened to little Hugo (or whoever).

He was always proud of things that shamed others.

He had a fairly complex Christ complex.

His worldview seemed to be something like “This place sucks. Let’s refurbish.”

He was impossibly energetic but lacked the kind of hobbies that actually required energy, which is why he often read books while walking and watched TV while pacing back and forth between rooms.

He could empathize with anyone, and if he found out someone in the world was suffering, Dad had to go home and lie down.

OK. What else?

I looked over what I had written and decided it was time to get to the heart of the man.

The concept of Dad’s death ruined his whole life. The very thought of it struck him down like some toxic jungle fever.

My God. This topic made my whole body feel heavy. Just as Terry had realized that the terror of death had almost killed him, Dad had often repeated his conviction that it was the base cause of all human beliefs. I saw now that I had developed a nasty mutation of this disease, namely, the terror of the terror of death. Yes, unlike Dad and unlike Terry, I don’t fear death so much as I fear the fear of it. The fear that makes people believe, and kill each other, and kill themselves; I am afraid of this fear that could make me unconsciously manufacture a comforting or confusing lie that I might base my life on.

Wasn’t I going off to chase the face from my nightmares?

Wasn’t I going on a journey to learn more about the face? And about my mother? And about myself?

Or was I?

Dad always maintained that people don’t go on journeys at all but spend a lifetime searching for and gathering evidence to rationalize the beliefs they’ve held in their hearts since day one. They have new revelations, certainly, but these rarely shatter their core belief structure- they just build on it. He believed that if the base remains intact, it doesn’t matter what you build on it, it is not a journey at all. It is just layering. He didn’t believe that anyone ever started from scratch. “People aren’t looking for answers,” he often said. “They’re looking for facts to prove their case.”

This made me think of his journey. What was it all about? He may have traveled the globe, but he didn’t seem to go very far. He may have dipped himself in different pools of experience, but his spirit stayed the same flavor. All his plans, plots, and schemes centered on man in relation to society, or larger- to civilization, or smaller- to community. He aspired to change the world around him, but he saw his being as solid and unchangeable. He wasn’t interested in testing the limits within himself. How far can someone expand? Can his essence be found and enlarged? Can the heart get an erection? Can your soul pour out your mouth? Can a thought drive a car? It hardly seems to have occurred to him.

Finally I knew how to revolt against my father’s ways! The nature of my anarchy was clear. Like Terry, I would live as though on the edge of death, as the world sank or swam. Civilization? Society? Who cares. I would turn my back on progress, and unlike my father, I would concentrate my attention not on the outside but on the inside.

To get to the bottom of myself. To get to the bottom of thought. To get beyond time. Like everyone, I’m saturated in time, I’m soaking in it, I’m drowning in it. To annihilate this profound, all-encompassing, psychological trick would really be an ace up my sleeve.

I had communicated my thoughts successfully to Dad from the jungle in Thailand, though he chose not to believe it. That means the manipulation of thought exists. That’s why you have to be careful what you think. That’s why most doctors quietly admit that depression, stress, and grief affect our immune systems, as does loneliness. In fact, loneliness is linked to higher death rates through heart disease, cancer, and suicide, and even to accidental death, meaning that feeling lonely may lead to fatal clumsiness. See your doctor if loneliness persists.

We ignorantly indulge in negative thoughts, unaware that thinking over and over again “I suck” is probably as carcinogenic as sucking down a carton of unfiltered Camels. So then, should I rig up a device where I can give myself little electric shocks every time I have a negative thought? Would that work? What about self-hypnosis? Even in my fantasies, beliefs, ideas, and hallucinations, can I stop my mind from running in old grooves? Can I emancipate myself? Renew myself? Replace myself like old skin cells? Is that too ambitious? Does self-awareness have an off switch? I have no idea. Novalis said that atheism is when you don’t believe in yourself. OK, in this respect I am probably an agnostic, but either way, is this my project? To test the limit of the power of thought and see what the material world really looks like? What then? Can I be of the world and in the world even when I have crashed through time and space? Or do I have to live on a mountaintop? I really don’t want to. I want to stay at the bottom and bribe seven-year-olds to buy me half-price tickets for the movies. How do I deal with such incompatible desires? And I know that to achieve enlightenment I’m supposed to witness the dissolution of my wants, but I like my wants, so what’s a guy to do?